The first question a board asks after a facade report comes back is what it's going to cost. The honest answer at that point is that nobody knows yet, because the engineer hasn't written a scope and nobody has been up on a scaffold. That's not much use when you have a budget meeting in six weeks.
You can get a lot closer than "it depends," though. Local Law 11 repair costs are driven by a short list of things you can learn about early, and once you know how contractors build a price, you can put a defensible range in front of the board long before the bids come in.
Where the money goes
Every facade job we price breaks down into four buckets. Access is the shed, scaffolding, swing stages or mast climbers that get workers to the wall and protect the public below. The masonry is the actual repair work, mostly priced per unit. Soft costs cover the engineer's design and site visits, DOB permits, and legal work on access agreements. And contingency covers the quantities nobody can see until the wall is opened.
Boards tend to budget for the second bucket and get surprised by the other three. On a lot of jobs, access alone is a quarter to a third of the construction cost.
Access: the shed and the scaffold
If the repairs are on a street-facing wall, you'll almost certainly need a sidewalk shed. Installation commonly runs about $125 to $150 per linear foot of frontage, and that price usually includes the first three months. After that you're paying rent, typically 5 to 6 percent of the installation cost per month. On 100 feet of frontage, that works out to roughly $12,500 to $15,000 to put the shed up and $600 to $900 a month to keep it there.
The monthly number looks small. It isn't the number that hurts. City data has put the average shed's lifespan at close to 500 days, and the reason is almost never the shed itself. It's a project that stalled on financing, an access agreement or a board vote while the rent kept running. The 2025 shed laws now add penalties of $5,000 to $20,000 for missing construction milestones, which we cover in our sidewalk shed guide.
Getting workers to the wall is a separate cost. On a seven- or eight-story building, pipe scaffold or a mast climber may make sense. On taller buildings, suspended scaffolds (swing stages) hung from the roof are usually cheaper. The choice depends on height, how much of each elevation needs work, and whether the roof can take outrigger loads. Your contractor should explain why they picked the method they did, because it's the line item with the most room for a different answer.
Masonry: unit prices
Most of the repair work is priced per unit, because the engineer's drawings estimate quantities and the real number only shows up once the wall is in reach. These are typical NYC ranges for the work itself, not counting access:
| Item | Typical range | Unit |
|---|---|---|
| Repointing | $18 to $35 | per square foot of wall |
| Brick replacement | $45 to $85 | per brick, installed |
| Steel lintel replacement | $1,200 to $3,000 | each, depending on span and steel |
Parapet reconstruction, cornice and terra cotta work, and balcony concrete repair are usually priced per linear foot or per piece, and they vary too much by building to put a useful range on here. Where your report calls for any of them, expect them to be among the bigger lines on the bid.
Repointing prices spread widely because the job varies. Grinding out hard cement mortar from a 1960s brick wall is slower than raking soft lime mortar from a 1920s one. Matching historic mortar color takes test panels. A wall that's 40 percent repointing costs less per foot than one where the crew moves the rig every day to hit scattered spots.
Soft costs
The engineer or architect who wrote your FISP report usually prepares the repair drawings and specifications, files for the DOB permit, and visits the site during construction to approve the work and file the amended report at the end. Boards often budget around 10 percent of construction cost for this, sometimes more on small or complicated jobs.
Access agreements with neighbors belong here too. If your contractor needs to put scaffold or protection on the building next door, you'll likely pay for the neighbor's lawyer, their engineer's review and sometimes a license fee. Those negotiations take months. Start them as soon as the scope shows you'll need one.
Landmarked buildings add a Landmarks Preservation Commission review, and usually more expensive materials to match the original.
Contingency, and why you need more than you'd think
Carry 15 to 20 percent contingency on the unit-price items. We'll take that position firmly. Facade quantities are always estimates made from the sidewalk and a handful of close-up drops. When the scaffold goes up, the crew finds brick that sounded fine from a distance but is loose behind the face, or a lintel that looked like surface rust and turns out to be delaminated steel pushing the brick out.
A board that approves the base bid with no contingency ends up calling an emergency meeting mid-project, while the shed rent runs and the contractor waits. That's the most expensive way to find the money.
A worked example
To make this concrete, here's a budget for a made-up but typical building: a nine-story, 60-unit co-op with 100 feet of street frontage and a SWARMP report calling for repointing, brick replacement and lintel work on the front elevation. The numbers are illustrative, using midpoints from the ranges above.
| Line item | Basis | Amount |
|---|---|---|
| Sidewalk shed | 100 ft at $140, plus 5 months' rent | $18,000 |
| Suspended scaffold | Front elevation, 8-month job | $60,000 |
| Repointing | 4,000 sq ft at $25 | $100,000 |
| Brick replacement | 600 brick at $65 | $39,000 |
| Lintel replacement | 12 lintels at $2,000 | $24,000 |
| Contingency | 15% of unit-price items | $24,450 |
| Engineer, design and site visits | About 10% of construction | $24,100 |
| Total | About $290,000 | |
That's about $4,800 per apartment, before any financing costs. Access and soft costs together come to more than a third of the total, which is why the masonry figure alone is never the number to take to the board.
Your building will be different. A building in worse shape, with parapet or terra cotta work, can double that figure without much trouble, and landmarked or cast iron facades regularly run past $1 million. At the other end, a building with a light SWARMP list of caulking and scattered repointing might spend in the low tens of thousands, mostly on access.
How to compare bids
The most common budgeting mistake we see isn't underestimating the work. It's picking the low bid without noticing it prices a different job.
Make sure every contractor prices the same engineer's documents and the same estimated quantities for each unit-price item. Then compare two totals for each bid: the total at the engineer's quantities, and the total if quantities come in 50 percent higher. A contractor who bid a low base price with high unit rates can look cheap on the first number and cost you far more on the second, and the second is closer to what usually happens.
Ask each bidder how they plan to reach the wall and how long they expect the shed to stay up. A bid with a shorter schedule and a higher price can cost less once shed rent and the board's patience are counted.
Phase it or do it all at once?
Phasing spreads the cost across fiscal years, and sometimes that's the only way a board can afford the work. But every phase pays to mobilize, rig and take down access again, and in some cases put the shed back up. On a job where access is a third of the cost, splitting the work in two can add 15 to 25 percent to the total.
Phasing tends to work when the elevations are independent (a front wall this year, the rear yard next year) and the report gives you time. It works badly when the phases share the same shed or the same scaffold drops. Whatever you decide, don't split the work in a way that leaves any Unsafe condition waiting for a later phase.
Getting the money together
Most boards use some mix of reserves, a special assessment, and a line of credit or an increase to the underlying mortgage. We went through the trade-offs in our post on SWARMP reports. The timing point matters more than the funding method: if the board votes on the money after the bids come in, add two or three months to the schedule. Get a budget range approved first, then bid.
Keep your filing deadline in view as you plan. Sub-cycle 10A reports are due February 21, 2027, and our Cycle 10 guide covers what each sub-cycle should be doing now.
Get a number you can take to the board
NYC Superior Construction does the repair side of Local Law 11 work across New York City, Nassau, Westchester and Rockland counties, and Central and North New Jersey. We've been doing it for more than 20 years and have 34 completed facade projects behind us. Send us your FISP report and we'll give you a scope and budget range built the way this post describes, with access, unit prices and contingency broken out. It's free, and there's no obligation to bid. You can also read more about our Local Law 11 repair work.
Frequently asked questions
How much does a Local Law 11 repair cost?
Anywhere from the low tens of thousands for caulking and light repointing to several hundred thousand for lintel, parapet and brick work on a typical mid-size building. Landmarked and terra cotta facades can pass $1 million. Access is often one of the largest line items.
How much does a sidewalk shed cost in NYC?
Installation commonly runs $125 to $150 per linear foot and usually covers the first three months. Monthly rent after that is often 5 to 6 percent of the installation cost.
How much contingency should we carry?
15 to 20 percent on unit-price items. Real quantities aren't known until the scaffold is up and the wall is opened.
Why do facade bids vary so much?
Usually because bidders priced different scopes or different quantities. Bids are only comparable when every contractor prices the same documents and the same estimated unit quantities.
Cost figures in this article are typical ranges for planning purposes, not a quote. Actual costs depend on your building, your engineer's scope, access conditions and market pricing at the time of bid. This is general information, not legal or engineering advice. Last reviewed: September 22, 2026.